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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

On Feminism

This isn't going to be a super eloquent post.

I've never been good at eloquence.

I don't aim to write many political posts on this blog, but here's one just for joshies.

I've been thinking a lot about feminism and what it means to me and all that jazz. It's complicated, right? Like, there are all of these different schools of feminism, including ones filled with racism and trans-hate and bullshit like that. I'm no expert on feminism, hell, I only really discovered it a few years ago.

Well, that's not true. I'd heard of it and rejected it soundly as some crazy liberal thing. This is back when I was a conservative. When you're raised in rural Pennsylvania on a farm by a bunch of blue collar people, you are likely to be taught the same values I was, and those were mostly conservative values. I've changed.

And feminism has changed, yeah, over the years that it's been recognized as a thing, and now it's not just for middle- and upper-class-white-ladies. Feminism in a lot of circles means equalism (gosh that's unwieldy) - rights and equality for everyone. That's what I believe in, these days - the feminism that means everyone gets treated decent and where laws treat people equally and the kind of feminism that tells people they need to be better to everybody and not just the people they were taught to be better to.

I get stuck in my old ways some days. Bothered by little things. I take a while to change. It's hard changing two decades of habits. Not hard enough to stop doing, but hard.

One thing I learned this year is I have to fight my battles carefully, and choose them even more carefully. I also learned sometimes it's worth putting in for something that has a small benefit even if it also has negatives. It's tough because it's a compromise but it's still sometimes worth it. The biggest thing I learned, though?

I can't let myself be swayed by the day to day changing winds of the internet. I have to research before I get angry. I have to think before I spout off my anger.